Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.

Top News

Wisconsin has fired head coach Paul Chryst and will pay him a $11 million buyout. Defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard, long known to be the heir apparent for the Badgers, takes over on an interim basis. For now.

Colorado fired Karl Dorrell with former Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Sanford, Jr. taking over the job until the end of the year. This is Sanford’s 4th school since leaving Notre Dame in 2017.

According to reports, multiple SMU players are preparing to sit out the rest of the season in order to save a year and transfer for 2023.

Manti Te’o will be on the halftime and post-game shows on NBC for the BYU game this weekend.

Clemson football players Malcolm Greene and Fred Davis are accused of drag racing each other leading to a crash that injured a US Postal worker last summer.

Uniform of the Week

We could feature Oregon here about a dozen times per year if we went through all of their looks throughout their Nike era. I really only have a couple big points to make about the Ducks today. Below is what they wore this past weekend while pounding Stanford into stumps. I’d like to shout out this Oregon Duck Tracker which remains the greatest living blogspot page on the internet. It’s so 2007 and I love every single thing about it.

Okay, point number one: I just want to see Notre Dame in these colors with a gold helmet on top. I just want to see one Shamrock Series uniform like this and I’ll shut up. Second point: We have to agree that the pushing up of the jersey with the contrasting tee-shirt hanging down is a trend that needs to stop. It’s bad on all fronts. It can obscure the player number, it makes players look shorter, and it flat out looks lazy and like attention wasn’t paid to detail—the opposite of Oregon uniforms, mind you.

Recruiting

Former Notre Dame verbal and offensive tackle Elijah Paige (0.8971) committed to USC as expected.

Ole Miss gained a verbal from safety Braxton Myers (0.9255) late last week.

In the 2024 class, Florida corner Jamari Howard (0.9325) committed to Michigan State.

Just yesterday, we posted an updated scholarship post which you can read HERE. 

YouTube Channel

A while back we discussed the EA Sports college football game coming back next summer and the worries about similarities to the Madden game. If you watch the video below you will see how infuriating it is to watch some of the best Madden players performing against each other. People have complained for years and years that Madden is far too much of an arcade type of game. You watch this stuff and it really doesn’t look enough like real NFL football.

The adjustments these guys are able to make are impressive, no doubt. I can’t stand how long the quarterback sits in the pocket and how long they try to make routes develop while throwing late (compared to real life timing) with overpowered arm strength. I haven’t played competitively in Madden against anyone in many years and I still have a bad taste in my mouth from memories of people spamming the same weird passing plays over and over. Smart by them, I suppose. But, not much of a NFL simulation.

Tunes

Today we are discussing Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. and his debut album in 1993. There’s a case to be made that Snoop Dogg is the most important hip-hop and rap star in history. Not necessarily the best, but my goodness Snoop has been in the spotlight as long as anyone in his genre and he’s definitely branched out to so many different cultural areas in a way that other rap greats haven’t come close to touching. Maybe Jay-Z is in the same orbit? I still think most Americans could pick out Snoop Dogg and would struggle doing that with HOV.

You could also argue Snoop’s Doggystyle album is really when gangster rap took off like a rocket ship and even if you think it was Dr. Dre’s The Chronic the year prior, Snoop was a huge part of that album too. I’ll stump for “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” for being one of the biggest swings and misses for a song title in rap history (why didn’t they call it “What’s My Name”?) but perhaps in the top 10 ever in the genre. It samples 5(!) songs and there’s really been nothing like this combination of music and rapping in hip-hop history.

Trivia

When did Notre Dame last lose coming off a bye week?

The Other Football

I still haven’t gotten over Tottenham’s 3-1 defeat in the North London Derby, thank you for asking.

Oh look, another hat trick over the weekend for Haaland. This machine has 14 goals in 8 games, double the next best scorer in the Premier League.

The Champions League was back this week highlighted by Inter beating Barcelona 1-0 and Benfica drawing PSG 1-1. Haaland scored twice yesterday in UCL, too.

Former Real Madrid, Napoli, Juventus, and Inter Miami striker Gonzalo Higuain announced his retirement this week at the age of 34.

Atletico Madrid have reached an agreement with Barcelona for the permanent transfer of Antoine Griezmann.

Xabi Alonso will take over as the new manager at Bayer Leverkusen.

Absolutely terrible news in Indonesia where police fired tear gas on a soccer crowd that invaded the pitch after a game leading to a stampede through far too small exits, injuring hundreds and killing 125 people.

Streaming

We tend not to get too film geek around here but the 2011 film Drive was a masterclass in cinematography and sound editing. Although, I always thought the movie should’ve been called Driver instead. I watched this on Netflix on a visit to my parents many years ago after my dad put in an enormous plasma TV in the basement of his man cave. A TV and movie were never made more for each other.

Ryan Gosling’s life is about to be swarmed by the upcoming Barbie movie next year. He’s among my favorite actors today in this type of quiet but psychotic good guy role. I’m just now learning that Gosling was in Only God Forgives back in 2013 with the same director as Drive. I’ll have to check that out, too.

A Look Back

No other game deserves a major deep dive 30 for 30 more than Notre Dame’s 2015 visit to Clemson. Perhaps we will book that as an off-season article next year? I feel like Stefon from SNL, “This game has everything!” It was such a wild ride with the slow start from Notre Dame, coming around to play really well, and the furious comeback in the 4th quarter including an insane ending.

It’s so weird because in the loss and in my memory it felt like Notre Dame turned a corner that night. Then, you look back and oh yeah 2016 happened hahahaha. We can save this for the deep dive in the future but man, you look at just 84 yards passing from Deshaun Watson and you shake your head at the Irish letting this one slip away.

18S Paddock Club

Rain and yellow flags highlighted a crazy weekend for Formula 1 in Singapore where championship leader Max Verstappen and Red Bull messed up in qualifying missing out on pole due to low fuel and backing out of his last 2 flying laps. Charles Leclerc started at the top but following an hour delay due to rain he was passed by Checo Perez in the other Red Bull through the first turn on Sunday’s race.

Everyone started on inter tires but the track was slow to dry and led to a bit of a boring race for quite a while, especially for the leaders. However, we would end up with the following stops during Sunday:

  • Lap 9 – Safety Car
  • Lap 22 – Virtual Safety Car
  • Lap 26 – Virtual Safety Car
  • Lap 29 – Virtual Safety Car
  • Lap 36 – Safety Car

In total, 6 cars wouldn’t finish, including both Alpine and Williams cars, plus Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou Guanyu.

Engines blowing up and tires locking up. 

Verstappen used the wrong engine setting at the start and fell back from 8th to 12th in what would become his worst weekend of driving in a very long time. A top 5 of Perez, Leclerc, Sainz, Hamilton, and Norris stayed that way throughout most of the race. Verstappen would eventually move up to 6th before Hamilton hit the wall and broke his front wing. Verstappen would lock up trying to pass Norris for 4th and ruin his tires eventually finishing in 7th place.

The end of the race saw Leclerc beginning to chase down Perez with the latter eventually pulling away late after the Ferrari tires once again didn’t hold up enough. Even worse, Perez was cited for 3 instances of leaving too far of a gap behind the Safety Car and was given a 5-second time penalty long after the race was completed. However, Perez finished 7.5 seconds in front of Leclerc and held on to his 4th victory in Formula One.

Japan GP Preview: Welcome back to Nihon! Formula One moves quickly through Asia and races this weekend at the Suzuka Circuit in Ino, Japan just to the west of Ise Bay. It’s a beloved track for many F1 fans and the site of many classic races in the past.

This weekend the swirling rumors about budget cap infringements has overshadowed preparation for the return to Suzuka. On the track, the high downforce turns should suit Ferrari well while the run from the hairpin in sector 2 through the Casio triangle near the finish line should be a huge opportunity for Red Bull’s straight line speed.

Japan Grand Prix
Suzuka Circuit
FP1 – Oct. 6th – 11:00 PM ET
FP2 – Oct. 7th – 2:00 AM ET
FP3 – Oct. 7th – 11:00 PM ET
Qualifying – Oct. 8th – 2:00 AM ET
Race – Oct. 9th – 1:00 AM ET

Rain is currently in the mix for Friday and Sunday, as well. Last week’s wet track in Singapore mixed things up just enough to provide entertainment while breaking up Verstappen’s win streak. Don’t forget with the time difference free practice actually begins tonight in the United States!

Second-year Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda is also returning to his homeland and making his Formula 1 debut at Suzuka, which is fun. With the pandemic foregoing races here and the F2 and F3 calendars not visiting in either of his campaigns with those series, Tsunoda hasn’t been on this track since his last Japanese F4 season back in 2018.

3 Questions for Japan:

1) Can someone hold off the Red Bull party?

The cynic would argue Red Bull was perfectly happy to not clinch Verstappen’s title in Singapore and it would’ve been difficult and somewhat deflating if it happened due to a blown engine from his rival. Now, the team heads to Japan with a renewed deal with Honda (including putting the logo back on the Red Bull/AlphaTauri cars starting this weekend) and it would be awfully sweet to raise the Driver’s Championship Trophy at Suzuka surrounded by the company that brought Red Bull’s car back to life.

2) Did McLaren grab the momentum back from Alpine?

Alpine is coming off a disappointing double-DNF in Singapore and haven’t scored points since a modest haul in Netherlands. Now, McLaren sit 4 points ahead in the tight battle for 4th place in the Constructor’s Standings. It doesn’t really feel like McLaren have done much except watch Alpine engines blow up but this fight between the teams could get really spicy down the stretch, especially given the contract controversy still simmering over Oscar Piastri.

3) What’s the future of F1 in Japan?

Suzuka probably ranks in the top 5 circuits among F1 fans and you’d think there’s no way Formula One Group would ever move this race. Then again, the same was said about Spa which they are just itching to take off the calendar.

The issues for Suzuka aren’t too disimilar from Spa in Belgium. The track is nearly 400 km from Tokyo in a modestly-sized area offering little in the way of glamour. If Honda doesn’t stay in F1 beyond 2025 (they own the Suzuka track) it’s possible Formula One Group looks to build something in Osaka in conjunction with the 2025 World Expo.

Trivia Answer:

Michigan, 10/26/19